ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of sex in colonial cultures and draws on the work of some of the major feminist historians, anthropologists and social theorists who have researched the area and provided a multidisciplinary analysis of the field. The particular focus of the chapter is on the significant and exciting contribution of Laura Ann Stoler’s work, whose work in the area of sex and intimacy in twentieth century colonial cultures has been powerful both theoretically and empirically. However the analysis of sex cannot be taken in isolation and is intersected by issues of gender, race, nation and class. In this regard the work of Anne McClintock (1995, 1997) has provided further analysis of discourses of race, gender and nation and provides a powerful additional contribution to the debate. In this chapter I first contextualise Stoler’s research by looking initially at the historical field of sex and sexuality in colonial cultures developed in the work of Philippa Levine (2004a) and Kathleen Wilson (2004) among others, who provide a historical framework to the development of relations of power, sex, gender and Empire in different historical periods. In the second part of the chapter I analyse the contribution of Stoler (1997, 2002, 2006) to discourses around the analysis of power, which she develops from the work of Michel Foucault, as well as to her extensive empirical analysis of Dutch, French and British imperial cultures. The third part of the chapter focuses on McClintock’s analysis of gender, race and nationalism.
